Category Archives: Homeschooling

Our oldest 16-year-old daughter Tiffany has a passion for music. She is currently learning piano and violin. She won the Best of Grade 9 Trophy at the Yip’s Music Festival 2017. Also, she was qualified as a finalist for the 2017 Hamilton Provincial. Although she did not get commendation in the Provincial, it was a wonderful experience and our whole family is happy for her.

Some people might be surprised that at 16 years old she is still at Grade 9 piano (some early starters already achieve ARCT before age of 15). Because of Kay and Melody’s eczema 6 years ago, Kay was not able to teach piano until Tiffany turned 10. So Tiffany, through her passion and hard work, is able to achieve Grade 9 in 6 years.

By all standards, Tiffany is not a musical prodigy but considering the fact that Kay is not a music teacher nor holds any music degree; in addition to the fact that Tiffany has never sit under a “proper” piano teacher, I would consider this a great achievement.

Viviana, our 11 year old is also a great piano and violin player who is going for Grade 8 piano exam this month. Their dream? A grand piano to practice on.

Best of Gr 9 Piano Trophy

2017 Hamilton Provincials

In yet another bill the Ontario Liberal government tries to take away your parental rights AGAIN. Just not too long ago, Ontario already passed a law that dramatically erodes the importance of traditional families (one male and one female) and allows a child to have up to 4 legal parent: read my post here

With Ontario’sBill 89 -Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act, Kathleen Wynne is attempting to erode parental authority over their children once more.

The bill seeks to amend and repeal the Child and Family Services Act and make amendments to other acts. These acts relate to matters dealing with child protection (Children’s Aid Society etc.), foster, and adoption services.

I’ve read the Bill, and the related Acts, and I’ve conferred with other concerned and like-minded parties. Here’s why we all should be concerned about Bill 89:

· The government is expanding its definition of what is “a child in need”. Beware. A child agency will intervene if they determine “a child is in need of protection”. Under Bill 89, one way a child is in need of protection is if “there is a risk that the child is likely to suffer emotional harm…and that the child’s parent or the person having charge of the child does not provide services or treatment or access to services or treatment…”.

Hypothetically, if my daughter doesn’t clean up her bedroom, is there a risk she may feel anxious if I confront her and make her do it? Must I provide her therapy for the anxiety she may experience? Or if a young child now declares he is a dog and wants to be treated as such, yet the parents refuse- would this child be considered a child in need? What if the child says he is transgendered instead, and mommy and daddy (oops- it’s “parent” and “birth parent” now!) refuse to take this child for hormone therapy and surgery to change his private parts? It looks like this child would be considered a “child in need” now.

· The government is pushing gender ideology onto child services. This means child protection, foster, adoption service providers, and judges will now have to take into consideration a child’s “race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, family diversity, disability, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.” And it won’t matter if your child is 5 or 15.

·The religious faith in a child’s upbringing is no longer a consideration. What this means is that if for any reason Child Services intervenes in a family and places a child into foster care, the “religious faith, if any, in which the child is being raised” as the Act previously mentioned, will no longer matter. In fact with this Bill, “religious faith” is stricken out at nearly every reference contained within the previous Act.

· A parent’s role is diminished. The current law states that “the parent of a child in care retains any right … to direct the child’s education andreligious upbringing…”. With Bill 89 parents have a right “to direct the child or young person’s education and upbringing, in accordance with the child’s or young person’s creed, community identity and cultural identity.” No longer do parents direct their child’s religious upbringing, but parents (and Children’s Aid Services et al.) bring up the child in accordance with the child’s creed. The emphasis is on the child to develop their “creed”, not the parents.

· Not ALL foster parents and adoptive parents will be treated equally. Several of you have shared with me your stories of fostering and/or adopting children; this is especially important for you. With Bill 89, if, for example, you reject gender ideology, you might be discriminated against. I have already heard reports of such discrimination. Bill 89 might put this practice into law.

Thanks our Lord for the wonderful Conference! We have about 225 people showed up and attended the 2-day conference. Many people supported the 4 vendors on Saturday, purchasing homeschooling resources and hand-made crafts.

I believe a lot of families were encouraged to have their own family businesses in the coming months, if not days. As you can see from the snap shot photos, Mr. Swanson is a very passionate speaker, with a heart to edify Christians to rebuild the godly home according to the Bible. Our panel speakers provided practical and personal experience in managing and running successful family businesses.

We sincerely appreciate all the volunteers who have made this conference possible. It is a first for our family and I am sure there are room for improvement. Therefore, we will be sending out a survey asking for all attendees’ feedback.

We are working to have the audio and video available for purchase. Stay tuned and God bless!

In our home everybody helps out in preparing a meal everyday. But we also ask the older girls to prepare the whole meal from beginning to the end. A team of 2 girls would have to discuss, plan, wash, cut and cook a meal for the whole family (usually at lunchtime). This is the basic homemaking skills that everybody (especially a girl) should learn. Sadly, almost no public school nor private school provides this type of training to the students. Only under the homeschooling environment would a young child be taught these important lifelong skills. There are the skills that our girls would learn through the simple act of cooking:

Teamwork: who gets to clean and cook what

Planning: what is the menu for the meal? Is there enough food for everybody?

Following instruction: how to follow the recipe and put the math skills into use when it needs to double or triple the ingredients.

Creativity: when there is no recipe to follow, how to best use the food on hand? Afterall, why not create your own recipe?

Cleanup: cooking is fun, but cleanup is also important.

Most of the young girls these days don't even know how to cook for themselves, let alone preparing a nutritious meal for the whole family. By teaching your children at a young age, you are essentially preparing them to be responsible and caring mothers in the future.

We have been saying on this blog for a couple of years that children can and should be taught at an early age to help out in the home. This is the beauty and essence of homeschooling: to train your children to be useful, joyful and hardworking human beings. If you send your children to daycare or public school, you lose that opportunity. When you place your children under some strangers' care, you are giving up your rights to shape the characters of your children, which is by the way, God-ordained responsibility for us parents. When you train and teach your children to help do the chores, you will enjoy and welcome more of them. The children, in turn, will be happier because they know they are important and needed in the family as well.

Here, Shoshana (5 years old) and cutting up some green onions while Melody (3 years old) is giving her a hand.

Some people say you can predict what a child would become when he is very young. Well, it seems to us that Joshua might become a great preacher or politician when he comes to age!?! Thanks to the training of 6 big sisters everyday.

What a year full of blessings from God!The most exciting event was the arrival of Joshua, our 7th child and first boy in the family.He was born on June 26 and weighed 7 lbs. 9 oz.It was a relatively smooth labour for Kay and she recovered pretty well.Joshua has since become the focus of the children.Everyone enjoys his generous smile.

We also had 2 wonderful trips.First, we went to Fair Havens in July for 4 nights in their serviced trailer.This was new for everybody and the children spent some time to select which bed/bunk bed/couch they would like to sleep on.Kay brought enough food for all meals while we enjoyed the dinner buffet on the last night.The children had a great time in riding the bike, cruising on canoe and kayak, fishing, playing soccer and basketball, and simply walking around.We also attended wonderful sermons from Pastor John Mahaffey on Ten Commandments.Together with some seniors, we waited until the rock-and-roll style music subsided and then entered the sanctuary.At night time before bed, we had a small camp fire in front of our trailer to end the day.Everyone wishes that we can come back again next year.

The second trip we had was going to the capital of Canada – Ottawa.It was a 4 ½ hour drive along Highway 7.We stayed there for 3 nights at Minto Suite Hotel.The room was very spacious for our family because it was a 2 bedroom apartment – fully equipped with laundry and kitchen appliances.There were so many places we wanted to visit in Ottawa, but we had to limit our choices.Finally, we decided to go to the Parliament Hill, Museum of Nature, Museum of Aviation and Space, Residence of the Governor General and the Byward Market.The highlight was the “Festival of Light” displayed in front of the Parliament Hill.It was a spectacular production that transformed the brief history of Canada into a 30 mins light and sound show.On the last day, we walked along the beautiful Rideau Canal and were already planning that we visit Ottawa again and rent bikes to cruise along the canal.

Derek had a 4 month parental leave from June to October.During this period, God had given him a new position at the Regional Municipality of York.It was quite a pleasant surprise to him because he had tried for 4 years to be employed by the public sector.Although it is a temporary position for 1 year, Derek is still grateful that God has allowed him to work closer to home in a wonderful organization.

Now, you probably have a question in your mind, as we have heard it many times, “So you finally have a son, are you going to stop?”As we have said before, we really believe that children are blessings from the Lord.We do not want to limit our family size for whatever reason, be it physical, financial or mental.We believe God’s plan is the best plan for us.We believe God is charging us with these children so that we can bring Him godly seeds for the next generation.Therefore, the answer to this question is: “If God says it is enough, then we are done.If God says he is going to bless us with more children, then we will accept them with joy and gladness.”

This year, we decided to share our joy with you electronically.We have prepared TWO e-gifts for you.One is the video “the year of JOY” down below. THERE IS ALSO ANOTHER SHORT NATIVITY MOVIE BY OUR CHILDREN ttthat you can watch at this link : http://www.littleapplesofgold.com/christmas .Feelfree to share this nativity movie with just anyone you wish!

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.May God bless you abundantly!

One of the advantages of having lots of siblings at home is there is always someone interacting with each other. And children pick up anything, good or bad, from others real quick. Here Viviana is teaching Melody to sing hymns to Joshua. Would Joshua become a great hymn singer in the future since he got training at the age of 5 months? We will see…